A simple, lengthy, and just plain fun robot combat game.
If you like little robots fighting each other, you’ll probably love Custom Robo Arena for the Nintendo DS. Released in the US in March of 2007, this obviously Japanese robot combat game features some very light RPG elements, as well as a Pokemon inspired overworld, well drawn anime characters, and, regrettably, and long and predictable story featuring some rather two dimensional characters.
The story begins when the protagonist awakes on his first day of school in a new town. As you receive your first Custom Robo as a gift, we quickly learn that Custom Robos occupy a special place in this society. They are used for entertainment, sport, crime, law enforcement, and even settling arguments. As you go off to school and being your very pokemonesque quest to become the best commander (a person who controls Custom Robos) in the world and win the Custom Robo championship, you’ll make friends with a pushy girl and a rather annoying sidekick. Overall the story is very basic, unimaginative, and predicable, and the character’s dialogue just a distraction from the good parts of the game.
In the overworld, you will spend your day mostly wandering from mission to mission in a completely linear fashion. Instead of simply playing the game, however, you must stop every mission or so and go to school, which, once you sit at your desk, lasts about 10 seconds. The game never gives you an incentive to go to school, other than the fact that you must in order to advance the story. The same goes for going home, eating dinner, and going to sleep. You get nothing out of this other than advancing the story.
Though the missions are all fairly similar, this is where they game shines. Most missions involve you finding someone and then fighting them with your Custom Robo in a special combat area known as a “holoseum.” If you lose a battle there are no consequences, you can simply hit the retry button and fight again, though you will almost never lose, since the game is very easy. Even if you do find yourself losing a few times in a row, the game will soon offer to handicap the opponent’s health by 25%, and then 50%. If you win a battle you receive some money that you can use to buy Robos and Robo parts.
In a Custom Robo battle, the player moves their Custom Robo around the small holoseum, firing their weaponry at the opponent and dodging enemy shots, until one of them drops from 1000 health to 0. Besides fighting with different Robos, most of which you can not get until halfway through the story, you can customize your Robo’s gun, which fires straight ahead, pods, which operate like homing missiles or mines, and bombs, which can be targeted anywhere in the holoseum and arc up into the air and then land. You can also customize your Robo’s legs, giving them advantages like higher jumps, or more speed. Most parts can be countered with other parts that use different strategies, but since the game is so easy, you don’t need to worry about changing parts for each battle.
Once you complete the main story, which will take you about 14 or so hours, the game will immediately start you on a short, mini story, which has you fighting in the Robo Championship. This will only last you about one or two hours, but once completed will unlock another story that has you fighting people in grudge matches. This is where the game can actually begin to be difficult, not only because the Robo matches get harder, but also because you’ll spend a lot of time wandering around looking for people to fight. A number of the grudge matches are hard to find and this serves only to make the gameplay frustrating and tedious. If you are a completist, however, you could easily spend 10 hours collecting every Robo and part.
Since you’ll be spending a long time with this game, it’s good to know that it looks fairly good. Though the Robo fight’s 3D graphics don’t quite stack up to other 3D DS games, the overworld looks very good. Even better is how, when you talk with any main character, an anime picture of them appears above the text. Though it’s not important to the gameplay, the anime is very well done and, since it has some simple animations, help portray the characters moods.
Overall, though the game is rather easy and the plot is paper thin, Custom Robo Arena offers a lengthy and good looking game for those who enjoy robot combat games, and even more for those who wish to collect every part.